He wonders if the bed springs know that they are different things from the springs in his body that clench and unclench throughout the night, instinctive in a helpless attempt to roll himself away from the fire burning in each of his bones. It’s the left side, hip to ankle, shoulder to ribs.
He thinks his body would like to split itself in half, the numb half and the pain, the springs inside the outer layers of his skin pushing him upright, mattress creaking somewhere beneath him where he starts, and it ends, manoeuvring legs onto the cold wood floor. One foot, then the other; an escape.
Machines.
When he closes his eyes, he hears gunshots. He hears the creak of wheels and the whirring of gears, clanks so fast and so loud they blend together into an ear-splitting whine that he can’t pick apart into any form of sense, no matter how hard he prises the pieces with his fingernails.
They’re already caked with dried blood, he thinks. They’ve already broken down soft bodies into machines and stitched bones together into a mockery of skin-bound substance.
Bodies.
There’s something between his fingers, sometimes, squishy and weak, that stops his hands from destroying.
It reminds him of the beginning, when someone smiled at him over the top of his tools.
“Sorry to bother you.” The man spoke with accent he recognized, but not one he’d ever heard in person. “I hear you’re good at fixing things.”
He rolled his eyes. (At least he likes to think he did.)
He said, “Depends what you mean by things.”
He was wrist-deep in a tangle of wires that kept malfunctioning on the front lines, they told him, no matter how reliable they were in training. It was his second time seeing this one, sleek metal, tarnished and bullet-marked. He wondered if the boy it belonged to looked the same, if he, too, was designed for something that he found he couldn’t live up to.
“It’s my arm,” the man said. “It’s jamming. Well, not mine, but the –“
“I know what you mean.” He could see the arm now, a newer model that started at his elbow. It looked like it hadn’t seen much action yet. “Do you know what’s causing it?”
The man looked sheepish then, eyes downcast for a moment, dark eyelashes against pale cheekbones. A smile.
“Look, I didn’t want to go through official channels,” he said. “It’s a little embarrassing. I was trying to do this trick with a beer bottle…”
Machines.
He thinks sometimes his ears hear like they’re supposed to, past the loudest kind of silence. It rings less like a siren and more like a telephone, jolting him out of his mind with the promise of connection rather than something worse.
He thinks he hears a voice when he picks up the receiver, pitched soft and low like it’s supposed to be comforting. It’s an accent he recognizes, he thinks, from back before the fire and the shouting and his nails worn down to the cuticle from biting them. It made it harder to hold the wires. Maybe it was better that way.
They’re not sure if you can hear me, you know. They said it wouldn’t hurt to try, but the stupid thing is I can’t think of what to say. Weird, right? Two weeks ago, that would have been the best fucking news in the world for you. Alex finally learned to shut his mouth. Maybe he’ll stay out of trouble now. Maybe I won’t have to keep fixing his malfunctions every other day like a fresh fucking recruit!
The voice cuts off. Gears grind in the distance. “Keep going,” he wants to say. “Keep going, I’m not –”
The thing between his fingers tenses, then relaxes. He feels it against his numb side, just above the hip, a weight more than a sensation.
Oh, hey. It’s ok. I mean, if you can hear me, I guess. Sorry. A beat of silence. Well, you have one like me now! Opposite arm, but same model. That’s cool, right? Like we’re matching. They should be able to get you a newer one at some point. You, of all people, should get the best tech; I mean, you’re, well. You’re you.
But,
“I am not me,” he doesn’t say. “I am machines. I am bodies. I am.” He is hollow metal, fitted internally with wires that send signals to the severed nerve endings in his elbow where there used to be an arm and bones wrapped with muscles and all sorts of fibres that were never in his job description to learn. He was more concerned with whether the gears clinked together correctly, how the wires crossed and short-circuited in the heat of battle.
He wonders if the wires in his arm know that they are different things from the fragile muscles that send signals down to a part of him that is no longer him. He wonders why the springs in the bed are dipping beneath a weight that isn’t his own, he wonders why the movement does not remind him of mechanical fires and the silent ringing of explosions, he wonders why the voice says when they told me, you know, I thought they meant you were and he reaches through the numbness, to the weight on his chest, he reaches through the ringing in his ears through the wires of the telephone (that are not the wires in his arm or the springs in the bedframe), he reaches until he can rest his hand on top of that weight.
Oh! Surprise in the voice now, a familiar accent and a sound like a smile. But I knew you weren’t. You couldn’t be. You’ve always been good at fixing things.
“I am,” he does not say. “I am machines and I am bodies and I am good at fixing things.”
